His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand,
He walked with.


His diction was in his own time censured as negligent. He seems not
to have known, or not to have considered, that words being arbitrary
must owe their power to association, and have the influence, and
that only, which custom has given them. Language is the dress of
thought; and as the noblest mien, or most graceful action, would be
degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross
employments of rustics or mechanics; so the most heroic sentiments
will lose their efficacy, and the most splendid ideas drop their
magnificence, if they are conveyed by words used commonly upon low
and trivial occasions, debased by vulgar mouths, and contaminated by
inelegant applications.

Truth indeed is always truth, and reason is always reason; they have
an intrinsic and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual
gold which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser
matter, that only a chemist can recover it; sense may be so hidden
in unrefined and plebeian words, that none but philosophers can
distinguish it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to
pay the cost of their extraction.

The diction, being the vehicle of the thoughts, first presents
itself to the intellectual eye; and if the first appearance offends,
a further knowledge is not often sought. Whatever professes to
benefit by pleasing, must please at once. The pleasures of the mind